Burning hearts are not nourished by empty heads

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English: Jesus Christ - detail from Deesis mos...
English: Jesus Christ - detail from Deesis mosaic, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the things most alarming about today’s culture is the way in which evangelicals are responding to attacks. Gone are the days, it seems at times, when believers devoted themselves to thinking deeply about the world in order to respond humbly to the church’s enemies without ceding any intellectual ground. 

Having one’s heart in the right place is all that matters - that a passion for Jesus and the life of the mind are mutually exclusive. What this view misses is that burning hearts are not nourished by empty heads. We must develop our minds if we are to sustain our passion for the Savior and deal with the bias against us.

From the college professor, to the politician, to the man on the street, believing the Bible is increasingly considered a leap of faith for the weak minded and uneducated. Trusting in Jesus Christ as the only way to God is labeled ignorant and arrogant. Facing this tidal wave of criticism, many Christians feel overwhelmed. Can so many brilliant people be wrong?

So, we've largely abandoned our posts. We've conceded the battle for the mind and retreated to a Christian ghetto where we don't have to provide answers—where we can content ourselves with sentimentalism. We've stopped striving for intellectual clarity; instead, we embrace contradiction as a hallmark of faith. We believe the lie that rigorous thought and devoted faith cannot coexist.

Yet this was not always the case. There was a time when Christians were the intellectual leaders of the day. They too faced a rising tide of godless thought, but they confidently responded with better God-honoring thought. They recognized the power and validity of God's truth in the Christian mind. It's time for us to recapture that vision. It's time to respond; to take back lost ground. It's time to renew our minds.



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